Kim Jong Il winds up tour of China as woes pile up at home

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Kim Jong Il, the enigmatic dictator of North Korea, was yesterday spotted in
Beijing on his way to a suspected four-hour summit meeting in the Great Hall
of the People with the Chinese President, Hu Jintao.

Mr Kim is understood to have arrived in the capital in the morning after a
six-day tour of China which focused on the more impressive aspects of the
country’s breakneck economic rise. Mr Kim’s hermetically sealed regime,
meanwhile, struggles with crippling poverty and food shortages — a plight
deepened by nuclear tensions and persistent acrimony with Seoul, Washington
and Tokyo.